Hampstead police await construction of new station

By JASON SCHREIBERUnion Leader CorrespondentNovember 28. 2013 7:12PMHAMPSTEAD — After years of planning, work is expected to begin on a $1.6 million police station.

Ground is scheduled to be broken this week with a groundbreaking ceremony planned for Dec. 7 at 10 a.m., according to Stephen Londrigan, a member of the station building committee.

The project is moving ahead after being OK’d by voters last March. It was approved after facing defeat on four other occasions over the last several years.

“The members on the department are looking forward to getting into a new updated facility. It’s been long overdue. We were hoping for an earlier start date for the work to begin but we understand,” police Lt. John Frazier said.

The 7,200-square-foot station will be built on town land on Veterans Way and will replace the cramped quarters at the police station on Emerson Avenue.

“I’d say the process has gone smoothly in that we quickly worked through issues, but it seems there is often one more step to the process to get to our goal. But at last we are near the center of the onion,” Londrigan said.

The town hired Frank Chacoine Construction of Weare for the project.

Londrigan said the construction firm was the lowest bidder and has also built other municipal buildings in the state and “came highly recommended from communities who used them.”

While the project is on budget, officials hope to see some savings along the way.

“We needed to spend some additional time to work with the contractor to get the project back on our budget targets. This phase is called value engineering. Although we are on target for the project, the contractor has pledged to us to continue to look for ways to save money,” Londrigan said.

He added, “Through the value engineering process we were able to get to our cost target by changing materials, using the town dump for disposing of the stumps and so forth.”

The contractor expects the project to take about eight months to complete, but Londrigan said it will all depend on the weather.